Posts tagged Doris Day

Last week we asked you to identify two famous Hollywoodites and the breed of their pets. It was, of course, Doris Day, a well known animal lover with her pet schnauzer and Humphrey Bogart with his great dane. (No chihuahuas for Bogie.)

Here’a another shot of Bogie and his pooch, this time with the missus.

And of course that gent up above with his best friend is –?? ( shouldn’t be hard to identify). We’re not sure of the breed however.

A few days ago we ran a blog about the death of Patty Andrews. Since then Joe has been reminiscing a bit with Frank about a few facts he was privy to, and Frank decided we should share them with our readers.

Hello again. It’s Morella and Segers, your classic movie guys, back again. And although the Andrews Sisters aren’t really linked to classic movies, we just loved them, and think it’s possible that a talent such as theirs may never be seen again.

Joe had the opportunity a few years back to read Maxene Andrews autobiography. As far as we know it has never been published, but it should be. It really gave insight into a bygone era.

Harmonies such as those produced by Patty, Maxene and LaVerne could only come from people who had known each other intimately and practiced non stop (think of other sister acts, The Boswells, The MacGuires, The Lennons, The Kings— Brother acts, The Mills Brothers, The Everlys — or the duo of Simon and Garfunkle, who grew up almost as brothers).

Today the music business relies on technology to produce that sound.

But besides the distinctive harmonies they produced — oldest sister LaVerne sang contralto, middle sister Maxene was the soproano and youngest sibling Patty the mezzo-soprano — The Andrews Sisters had qualities none of those other acts had.

That is, the ability to move gracefully in unison, dance and display an arch comedic touch. It was almost as if they could parody themselves. This is evident in their films. Go on You Tube and see most of their musical numbers from their films.

Yes, like alot of siblings, they argued. They had very controlling parents and La Verne often sided with Mom and Pop against Maxine and Patty. Then they began arguing about money. This came about because early on they’d signed with a manager, Lou Levy, and agreed to spilt their earning equally, each taking 25%. Later on Maxine and Lou married, which means they were getting 50% and LaVerne and Patty only 25% each. They, naturally felt it should be one third each. The Levys disagreed.

Even after the group split, then reunited, they held grudges about money. And long after LaVerne’s death, when Maxine and Patty were on Broadway in the hit show OverHere, disagreements about money affected their career. The show was set to tour but the sisters argued about salaries, Maxine’s husband sued the producers and the deal flopped.

Joe saw that show, both the prototype L.A. production which starred only Patty, and the full blown Broadway production which starred Patty and Maxine. The show was a piece of fluff and would have bombed except for the Sisters’ drawing power and the fact that every night after the play they would perform a complete concert of their hits.

Somehow they managed to change the harmony so they sounded exactly as they had when La Verne was with them.

One other interesting tale about Patty Andrews. She had a fierce temper. Her first husband was Marty Melcher, who was their agent and road manager. By 1949 Marty saw that Patty’s career was waning, and he turned his interest to an up and coming star by the name of Doris Day.

One night Doris’ neighbors were treated to the sight and sound of Patty Andrews as she battered Doris’ front door with a baseball bat while shouting epithets about Day stealing her husband.

Patty was probably lucky to lose Marty (he and Doris eventually married) before he squandered her fortune as he later did with Day’s.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here again with more ruminations on the entertaining world of old-fashioned Hollywood movie publicity.

Sometimes the publicity back then was more entertaining than the movie, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Today, we’ve invited a special guest — our longtime friend, veteran Hollywood trade journalist and former studio publicist Hy Hollinger — to join us in evoking a once-upon-a-time publicity adventure he vividly recalls to this day involving a young Doris Day (she was 24 at the time) at the very beginning of her movie career.

As we discussed in a previous blog, getting newspapers to publish a studio-manufactured publicity still was a key objective back in the Forties when print media ruled the media roost. Sometimes the studios would lend their stars to inventive photo ideas dreamed up by the newspapers themselves.

This is where Hy comes in, so let him tell it:

There’s a color photo somewhere in the archives of the New York Daily News showing me— as Santa Claus — pinning a necklace on Doris Day.

That photo was taken in late 1948, when I, as a junior publicist at Warner Bros. in New York City, escorted her to the News building to launch a promotional effort for her first movie, “Romance on the High Seas.”

The News photo editor wanted a shot for the Christmas issue of the Sunday magazine section. Thus, I was dispatched to Brooks theatrical costumes to be fitted with the Santa garb.

The high-spirited Doris made no fuss during the Santa Claus business. (“Romance”) was her first movie following a career as a band singer, including touring with the Les Brown band and entertaining the troops with Bob Hope. A screen test landed her a contract with Warner Bros. Nobody signed me to play Santa Claus.

The studio pulled out all stops to introduce their new movie queen. Her costars were Jack Carson (clowning with Doris in the top photo), Janis Paige and Don Defore, and the cast included such recognizable supporting players as Oscar Levant, S.Z. Sakall, Eric Blore and Franklin Pangborn.

Michael Curtiz produced and directed, Julius J. Epstein and I.A. Diamond wrote the screenplay, and Julie Styne and Sammy Cahn provided the music, including the Oscar-winning song “It’s Magic.”

Working for a movie company and playing Santa Claus way back in 1948 launched a Bronx-born hick’s career as a fringe observer of the quirks of movie stars and moguls.

After a series of meetings and conversations between Joe and Dorothy about a possible book project, it became clear that her re-emergence on the show biz scene in the 1980’s — which astonished much of show business at the time — was primarily driven by one thing.

Dorothy needed the money, she confessed to Joe.

Like many women of her age and time, she had absented herself from the finances of her family, leaving such matters to her businessman husband.

After he passed she discovered that all their credit cards had been maxed out. That all their stock had been sold. That her husband had cashed in his life insurance. That there was little if any money left.

Dorothy was urged to file for personal bankruptcy.” No,” she said.” I’ll go back to work and pay all my debts.” And that’s exactly what she did.

Fortunately her step-son, William Ross Howard IV, knew enough about the entertainment business to take over as Dorothy’s agent. At first the only job available was a supporting role in an El Paso dinner theatre’s production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park”.

GASP! IS THAT DOROTHY LAMOUR ??

Lamour told Joe that her most horrible moment occurred when she walked onstage for the first time, and was greeted with a collective gasp from the audience. Naively expecting to see a youthful, sarong-draped Dorothy out of her earliest movies, audiences had to visually adjust to the deliberately frumpy-looking actress in her mid-Sixties playing the mother of a new bride.

But with Dorothy’s name, the offers soon came flooding in. What began as nervously tentative return driven by financial desperation quickly turned into late-career show business triumph.

Lamour suggested to Joe that her financial predicament could provide the makings of a wonderful new book with Dorothy the centerpiece representing so many women of her generation who had blissfully left finances to husbands only to find themselves financially stranded after their mates departed. There was a real story here!

All across America there were thousands of women in their 50s, 60s and 70s who, when their “upper middle income” or even “rich” husbands died, found out they had in fact been living in a financial house of cards. There WERE no stocks, investments or bank accounts that these women could fall back on.

Without a movie star name to back them up, these women were forced to return to the work force often as waitresses, restaurant hostesses or sales clerks. Writing a book with Dorothy about how such women cope in such pressing circumstances seemed to Joe to be a worthy and most interesting project.

Joe whipped up a four-page book proposal, and took it to several New York publishers. One, the late Lyle Stuart, snapped it up. He told Joe he was buying the book idea at least partially because Lamour was the first movie star he had fallen in love with. (Stuart had never forgotten seeing as a young teenager Dorothy in 1936’s “The Jungle Princess.” Ah, that sarong!)

And, Stuart was savvy enough to realize the potential of a book about a famous Hollywood star experiencing the same distressing situation as an average housewife confronting the reality that dear departed husband had spent all the money, leaving a pile of debts in his wake. (Similar fates befell, by the way, Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds.)

But over time, Lamour began to get cold feet. Would this book be too revealing?

She finally made it clear to Joe that the subject of her financial straits was something much too personal — not so much about her personal distress but about the negative effect public disclosure might have on the memory of a man she had loved for more than three decades.

To Joe’s regret to this day, the book project with Dorothy never came to be. (Dorothy continued working into the late 1980’s. She even appeared as a disheveled housewife who gets bumped off in the horror movie“Creep Show 2.”)

She died in her North Hollywood home of a heart attack on Sept. 22, 1996. She was 81. Dorothy is remembered in many ways including her two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for her movies and another for her radio shows. By most accounts she was pretty well off financially at the end.

YESTERDAY’S PIC: Dottie with Bob Hope and Joan Collins on one of Hope’s TV Specials. Collins had the female lead in the last of the Road movies with Hope and Crosby. Hope saw to it that Lamour got a cameo in the film, “The Road to Hong Kong.”

Hello everybody. This is Mister Joe Morella and Mister Frank Segers here again at the Classic Movie Blog. without MRS Norman Maine.

Today we welcome our regular guest contributor, Larry Michie, literary man of the world and former television editor of Variety.

Larry muses most on a most puzzling classic movie fact – why most film versions of Hemingway books are hard to digest today. We urge you to read on and find out why.

Here’s Larry:

Ernest Hemingway has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential – and popular – writers of the twentieth century.

His distinctive style and gripping tales of love, war, honor, manliness, and loss were read, absorbed and acclaimed by generations.

As might be expected, Hemingway’s various works of fiction were turned into motion pictures by some of the leading masters of Hollywood. For reasons that could be argued eternally, most of those motion pictures have been embarrassing flops. Somehow the genius of his prose didn’t translate to film very well.

Oddly enough, one of the better films was the first – 1932’s “A Farewell to Arms,” a later version of which is discussed below.

Hayes was good, but Cooper was outstanding. He owned the screen. No surprise that a decade later Cooper was tapped to play another Hemingway hero in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

The Hayes/Cooper movie is remarkably true to the novel, and the World War I scenes are handled well by director Frank Borzage (there was an Academy Award for cinematography).

One aspect of the movie that is a bit startling, considering the time in which it was made, is that the film was true to the novel, which meant that the two lovers not only had sex but conceived a child – with no more sanction by society than the anguished blessing of a priest. Menjou plays a villain’s role, conspiring to keep them apart until Lt. Henry is forced to desert so he can be with his lover.

True to Hemingway’s tale, Catherine’s child is born dead, and she herself soon expires. Pretty strong stuff for 1932, especially since the Hays Office was in existence. (The Motion Picture Production Code was set up in 1930.)

It’s only appropriate at this point to hold one’s nose and bring up the later incarnation of “Farewell to Arms,” the 1957 version starring Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones, with the stellar backing of Vittorio De Sica, Oscar Homolka, Mercedes McCambridge and Elaine Stritch.

Hudson was, in a word, unwatchable.

Scratch that film off your list, unless you actually enjoy pain. Not even Ben Hecht’s screenplay could rescue this turkey. Rock should have saved his energy for Doris Day.